Cloth Diaper Pail

Devon,

I use and sell cloth diapers, and I have dealt with some stink in my years cloth diapering. The system that I use in my own home is just a simple trash can w/lid combo. It isn't air tight and does not lock. I use a pail liner and wash it with my diapers. I also use baking soda and essential oil in my pail between washes. Here are some thoughts I have...

1. It doesn't sound like you have a problem yet. Don't assume that diaper duty will get worse just because people say so. The only difference I have now between toddler diapers (15 months) and newborn diapers are rinsing the poo off them, and making sure I don't go more than three days without washing.
2. You can rinse, or dunk, or just shake extra poo into the toilet. If you do run into stink issues, this is the first recommendations
3. You can buy DeoDisks, but I personally hate the smell of them. I make a baking soda deodorizer. Boil water. Shake some baking soda into a medium sized bowl. Spoon water into it, just enough to make a thick paste. Spoon the paste into muffin tins and let dry. You will wind up with little cakes of solid baking soda. I add essential oils to these when I start a new pail of diapers. I like tea tree and whatever else I am in the mood for - usually lavendar or something citrusy.
4. Spray out your pail between washes. I use Shaklee's Basic G disinfectant and just spray the pail and lid and let it air dry. Every now and then I rinse it out. You shouldn't ever have to scrub your pail if you use a liner.
5. Don't go more than a few days between washing. NEVER leave for vacation with dirty diapers in the pail. (Ask me how I know! :p)
6. You can also put a few drops of essential oils like tea tree or lavendar on a washcloth and drop it in your pail liner when you start a new pail of diapers.

Cloth diapering a toddler really isn't that big of a deal. It's not any harder than CDing a newborn, and not much more effort than using disposables. (I know. I've used both.) Good for your for choosing cloth. Feel free to email me if you have any other questions. I love talking cloth!

Cheers,
S. L
Little Roo
____@____.com

1 mom found this helpful

In 4 years of cloth diapers I have never used and airtight diaper pail, just a regular plastic trash can with a lid. As long as you rinse your diapers out in the toilet it shouldn't be a problem, of course it will smell when you open the lid but as long as you keep up on laundry and rinse the pail out between washes you should be okay.

kudos to you for going cloth!

I just use a plastic pail as well, but the order isn't bad (just smells for a few seconds when I put the diaper in). I usually wipe it out with a bit of clorox when washing my diapers and let it air dry. I have also heard that putting a laundry bag in the pail helps because you can just pull the laundry bag out and wash it along with the diapers. Putting a few drops of lavendar or a pail deorderizer can help with the smell, but I find it to be rather minimal and I have 2 in diapers.

with 13 kids in my family growing up we did cloth diapers for all but the last two babies. I'm the third, so I did a lot of diaper changing. My mom never had a special diaper pail. we were required to "rinse" out the diapers in the toilet before putting them in the pail. that meant to dump off the poop and flush that then swish the diaper until the remaining was gone and then wring it out before putting it in the diaper pail. we did the same with wet diapers and wringing them out before putting them in the pail. this made it so that the diapers weren't so smelly.

I just use the foot-pedal style, a regular kitchen trash can. With my first kiddo, I didn't even use a liner. I'd just spray it would with vinegar/water when I emptied it to do a load of diapers and would air it out with the lid open during the wash time. I also didn't 'rinse' my diapers--I just scraped off most of the poop and tossed them into the pail. Never had a problem with odor, except for the few seconds the lid was open during diaper changes.

Hi Devon!

We just use an open cloth laundry bag- we do cloth diaper laundry every 2-3 days and only rarely has the smell been anything to even notice.

I think using what you already have is fine, you could try adding some baking soda to the pail to see if that helps. There are Deo Disks to help with smell (www.cottonbabies.com), but I have not tried them. If you want to get more of the poop off the diaper, you can try a diaper sprayer that hooks to your toilet. We haven't found that we have needed that though (our daughter is 15 months old).

I would try one thing at a time so as to not end up with a bunch of stuff that you may not end up using. Good for you for using cloth!!!

H.
www.naturalchoices4baby.com

I had to use cloth diapers for my daughter,(my now ex insisted)anyway I used a diaper pail he. Unless you plan on using cloth for other babies its a good way to go. I used dreft baby laundry to soak them all the time, also used in the laundry, when they were poopy I sloshed in the toilet to get it off and the into the pail to soak till it was time to wash them. Remember hot water sets stains so use cold to soak.It does kind of keep the smell down using a diaper pail.
Good luck and enjoy your baby.

We still have/use our products for baby #2 (the stuff is 3 years old). We used to use a diaper bin (just a small trash can) but now just use the large sized diaper bag from Cotton Babies. We have two SAHM-made wet bags with a nice design on the outside and PUL liner inside. With kid #1 we dumped the fairly solid stools into the toilet and #2 isn't quite to the solid stage yet. We have an LG front loading washer so even the icky stuff that dries (we usually wash every 3 days) gets totally removed. No real odor issues as the dirty diaper bag is over in the laundry room.

I sell cloth diapers so I talk with a lot of moms about this. Most of them are using a simple trash can with a cloth daper pail liner. Two of the popular brands of cloth diaper pail liners are Wahmies and Little for Now (my brand). Cloth diaper pail liners, such as you mention that you ordered, are wonderful because you won't need to keep scrubbing out the pail. If you are washing diapers at least every 2 days you should not have too bad of an odor problem. However, if the odor bothers you, you can use Citrus Circles (paper disks with a citrus scent) or Sheepish Grins Diaper Pail Deodorizer (a powder you sprinkle in the pail that also makes diapers come cleaner in the wash). Some moms prefer a hanging zippered cloth diaper bag so the odors are more contained, but I prefer to use a pail that allows a little circulation so the ammonia does not build up.

We've tried two different diaper pails --- diaper Genie and diaper Champ (I think). Neither one were able to mask the smells of poopy diapers. For disposable diapers --- the best thing was to put them in a grocery bag and directly to the outside garbage. I don't have experience with cloth diapers.

set the pail outside with lysol or bleach water in it. make sure you always rinse the diapers out in the toilet first. :)

I use a hanging diaper bag from Mother of Eden on the door knob to the nursery. It is open at the top and it smells waaaaay better than one of those diaper Genies for disposable. Because you will be getting rid of the poop in the toilet it doesn't have to smell bad. You can add some essential oil - lavender or tea tree work well if you start to smell some odor and it takes it right away.

That said, I do wash every other day. If you have a service that only comes once a week, you might want to consider storing some in the garage or basement!

We use the Diaper Champ. It was about $30 at Wal-Mart. It can be used with either disposable or cloth diapers. It has a well you put the used diaper in and then flip it over so the dirty diaper goes into the pail without you having to open it up. If a diaper gets stuck (which the larger, bulkier cloth ones sometimes do) you can open it and pull it out. I can fit about 3 days worth of diapers inside this pail (we use a variety of pocket diapers, prefolds, wraps, and diaper doublers). Hope this helps.
K.

Years ago, my sister-in-law had a simple plastic bucket with a lid..sort of like a larger trash can and she had this right next to her washing machine and it also was in the bathroom. She filled it half full with water and I believe she added borax to the water and basically, presoaked all the diapers before washing. Of course the solids were removed down the toilet bowl and all she did was stick'em in the bucket, swish them around a bit dunking/and redunking & such and let them soak. I think she washed diapers only 1 or 2 times a week. If it was an extremely "bad" diaper...she actually did the dunking in the toilet bowl to remove as much soil as possible before the re-soak. I even think she used a product called DREFT or something like that.

I never smelled any evidence of diapers in her bath. She used rubber kitchen gloves to pull the diapers from the bucket and wring out the pre-soak and threw them in the washing machine. The pre-soak water, she simply dumped down the toilet.

I have noticed the trend toward cloth diapers and am wondering if you can fill me in as to why? Having dealt with cloth diapers with my first two children I was ecstatic to have paper diapers for my last child. Before they were invented diaper laundry was a stinking, laborous job! Why are some mothers going back to them?